Video, William Villalongo & Shraddha Ramani, 2025

In 1900, W.E.B. Du Bois organized a series of infographics on the progress of Black peoples after Emancipation, to be displayed as part of the American Negro Exhibit in the 1900 Paris Exposition world’s fair. Using the still-developing field of data visualization, the American Negro Exhibit worked to upend the conceit of Western superiority and inevitable “progress” of industrialization by rendering in stark relief the dynamic participation of Black peoples in American social and economic life, and their global participation in science, literature, and art.

In Printing Black America: Du Bois’s Data Portraits in the 21st Century, artist William Villalongo and urbanist Shraddha Ramani update and reimagine Du Bois’s infographics. Printing Black America is comprised of a series of fine art print portfolios inspired the project of Du Bois and his team for the contemporary moment. Villalongo & Ramani create new images or “data portraits” using a range of printmaking techniques, current data and living projects by Black scholars, social scientist and activists. This project uses the original data portraits created for the American Negro Exhibit as a springboard for the critical possibilities found at the intersection of art and social science to render portraits of Black life in the 21st century.

Printing Black America consists of six thematic portfolios: First Impressions, Populations, Employment, Ownership, Education and Communities. Each portfolio holds 5 prints, culminating in a total of 30 prints printed by presses across the country. Printmaking partners include USF Graphicstudio, Powerhouse Arts, Island Press, Highpoint Editions, Mullowney Printing Company and Paulson Fontaine Press.